Bright foreground, dark room help

[timmy1729]

Sorry for another baby picture , but they are the best thing I have to practice photo restoration on. I was such a cute baby... what happened?

Anyway...

I think this is a good example photo. I want to make this look decent, but when I lighten up the room, I can get the front to look ok, but the back looks horrible. Then, my image gets all blown out if I do any lightening to it. What can be done in a situation like this? I'm sure this has to be a common problem and I want to be ready the next time I see it. I appreciate all the wonderful advice I find here! Thanks everyone!

[Juergen D]

You can select the baby, chair and table, reverse that and then place the background on a new layer. Set that layer to Screen, maybe twice. You can also mask the right side with a gradient; that way the lighting of the room is more even.

Juergen

[curtism]

If you're using Photoshop CS3, try the Shadows/Highlights adjustment. This was just a quick adjustment to give you an idea of what it can do.

Curtis

[timmy1729]

Thanks for the suggestions Juergen and Curtis! I will try them both!

[chillin]

I would work on the foreground first & adjust the background last.

[0lBaldy]

I went just the opposite and darkened the background..
first copied Background
levels on that layer
Multiplied twice
sharpened
cropped a couple ways

Still needs some cleaning but thats up to you (this is just a quick sample)

[Verywierd]

I went for the look of reversal film. A lot of selective colour layers and contrast masking.

[SusanMeyer]

I would approach this by either using Camera Raw in CS3 or Lighrroom. There are some very easy to use features for blown out highlights and dark backgrounds that are actually better than the hightlight features inside of Photoshop.
My Favorite is Recovery for blown out highlights, and fill light for dark backgrounds. If you take them too far, you may have to add a little of the blacks slider to put back the richness back in.

Hope that this helps,

[timmy1729]

Well, after spending much of Sunday on this, here is what I have so far. Should I scrap this? I had made a separate layer for the background and a layer for me. I had to adjust both so differently that I tried to blur the edges where they meet each other but it ended up looking a little hazy... ok, a LOT hazy.
I managed to get the detail from the bib, but that's going to take some color replacement or selective coloring because to show the colors, I ended up with a dark grey background on the bib. Would some sharpening save this the way it is? Or are there any effects that would work? I don't know for sure what my hair color really was then, I'll have to ask. But, I think I got it close.